


Home

by vein



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Porn with some plot, Second person POV, hurt/comfort sorta, non-graphic references to past trauma, references to suicidal thoughts, sad Koujaku, too much smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 15:36:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5132900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vein/pseuds/vein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-canon. Koujaku invites Mink over for dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

 The winter is colder than you'd thought it would be. The skies over Midorijima are heavy and gray, but the snow won't seem to fall.

You want to go home. You don't know, anymore, whether home means _America_ or _death_ , but it hardly matters. There's no connection between you and this place. You've achieved your revenge, severed what few threads bound you to this place, and now you're finished with it.

Then Red invites you over for a meal.

He says he'll cook. You don't know why you accept, and when the date draws near you consider freezing him out, but you think of yourself as one who honors the commitments he has chosen to make. As the clock ticks over to seven exactly, you step onto his porch with your pipe in your hand. He opens the door before you can knock – his eyes tired, his smile weak – and he ushers you in. It's fine, he tells you, to smoke inside. He does it all the time.

He says this to you, as if he thinks you can't see the lit cigarette hanging from his lips. You'd worry about him if you cared more. As it is, you don't mind if there's ash in your food. You've eaten worse.

You can't call him Red tonight. He's wearing green, the color – you think, involuntarily – of new growth. So instead, as you slip off your shoes at the threshold, you nod to him and say, “Koujaku.”

He leads you inside in silence, like he's forgotten how to respond to the name.

His house is the opposite of your bare-bones apartment. Traditional. Decorative everything. Scarves, tassels, and a lot of fake flowers – delicate buds of painted paper or silk, set into thin glass vases. There's warmth to it; this was all, once, carefully chosen.

But it's coming apart at the seams. You touch a lacquered console table and leave a smear in the dust. Tobacco smoke has yellowed the walls. The kitchen is clean, shining like he never stops scrubbing it. He pours you steaming tea in a white cup with a dark hairline crack, and you tell him that it's good.

From the cutting board on the counter he says he hopes sukiyaki is all right. You've never had it, but you know it's comfort food. It's one of those meals you'd hear prisoners cry out for, when they hadn't been fed in days or weeks.

You say, “I've heard good things.”

In the time it takes him to chop the last of the vegetables and bring the ingredients to the pot on the tabletop heater, he finishes his cigarette and smokes another down to the filter. He talks the entire time, in a frantic meandering tone, like he's being pressured to perform. Something about timing and yam noodles and Kansai style. You put down your pipe and watch him, but can't really manage to follow his words.

Sukiyaki turns out to be a beef dish. He adds thin slices to the cast-iron pot and cooks them in their own fat. You remember that once, you'd have wondered where the meat came from. Once, you would have held a certain amount of disdain for anyone who used the flesh of an animal with no thought or prayer for where the rest of the body might have gone. You're not sure whether it's good or bad that you can't bring yourself to care any longer.

He seasons the meat. Sugar, soy sauce, cooking wine. It cracks and sizzles in the pot, and you're not sure if it makes you hungry or turns your stomach. You keep your mouth shut. You have no good reason to feel sick.

While he's stirring the meat, pouring in the vegetables, adding water, he laughs at himself. He says he doesn't know why he chose a dish like this for tonight. It's a popular winter meal, yes, that much is true, he tells you. He wipes the sweat from his brow with a sleeve; you can see a dark spot form on the silk.

The trouble is, he says, sukiyaki is best enjoyed with family, with friends. It's less suited for couples than for larger groups. And here you are, the two of you, sharing it only amongst yourselves. Isn't that a shame, shouldn't he have thought it through –

You cut him off. “It's fine. It smells good.”

He smiles and bows his head, says, _ah, of course, of course, of course._ He thanks you for the compliment. And he falls silent, leaning back in his chair, pretending his hair needs to be fixed, while the meat and vegetables simmer together in their sweet and fragrant sauce.

You can't stand to hear him prattle on and on just to hear himself speak. You can't stand that he feels as though he's got to justify his choices to you.

You're fine with silence. You've always suspected that you can't consider yourself to be close to a person unless you're comfortable sitting with them when the conversation wanes. With your family, you could be silent. You were the quiet, bookish one; your sister was the talker, and that's how it stayed until your time with your family came to an end.

You prefer silence, but Red doesn't. He fidgets, stirs the food, casts worried looks your way. He wants to play the good host, and it's not your job to put him at ease, but all the same you find yourself asking, “Can I help you prepare the food?”

His eyes widen, then settle back beneath his cracked but placid veneer. He says, tentative, that you can beat an egg for the dipping sauce, if you'd like.

You stand up and do as he asks. You think, partway through, that it might have helped him feel useful if you'd asked where to find the eggs or whisk, but by then it's too late. You've got both in your hands.

By the time you're done he's serving the food. He keeps the heater on and adds more raw ingredients to the sauce, to replace what's about to be eaten, including a bowl full of udon noodles this time. He starts talking again, telling you: the starch absorbs the sauce, if there's much left over he'll serve it tomorrow over rice.

You look down at your bowl, which is heaped with steaming greens, meats, and broth. In passing you think of how hard it can be for you, these days, to eat for pleasure instead of treating meals as what they are, at their basest level – just fuel, to keep you alive. You can't afford to think that way anymore, now that you're not sure why you're still bothering to live on.

You say what you're supposed to say before you eat; you hold up your end of the custom. Then you look at Red and you make yourself say, “Thank you. It's been a long time since anyone prepared a meal to share with me.”

You think again of your sister.

You wonder if she'll ever be at rest, as long as you live, as long as you keep helplessly invoking her spirit in this way.

He softens. He meets your eyes for the first time since that brief flicker acknowledgment he offered when you crossed the threshold of his home. He says, “That's a shame. Sharing food is an important part of life, don't you think?”

When you don't answer right away, he drops eye contact and continues. “It's been a long time since I've had anyone to cook for, too.”

You keep silent, because you know what he's thinking. You eat the food; it's good. The beef is lean and higher in quality than anything you've eaten here before, but you'd have liked it just as well without meat. The tofu is lightly browned, but soft and flavorful with the sweet and savory broth inside. You find yourself eating it quickly, along with big mouthfuls of leeks and mushrooms and chrysanthemum greens.

Red eats slowly. He adds water or soy sauce to the pan now and then, and stirs it frequently. Although you haven't had much to drink, he keeps reaching over as if to fill your glass.

At last, once the udon has simmered long enough that he can add some to your bowls, he says what's on his mind. “Have you heard from Aoba lately?”

Anyone can tell that Red has his demons, and you suspect they run a lot deeper than unrequited love. You indulge him anyway. “I've seen him around town.” You haven't. Until tonight, you hadn't left your apartment in over a week. “He seems happy.”

He _is_ happy. Red doesn't need you to tell him that.

Aoba is happy now, with someone who – like him – was made in the depths of Toue's laboratory complex. You tell yourself it's best for him; it's the only way for him to process the terms of his own creation.

You carefully avoid considering that your life, too, was shaped in full by Toue. But in the aftermath of the coup you've all pulled, you've caught Red's eye more than once, and you've seen that he knows what you're thinking.

“I'm happy for him,” Red insists, vehemently, as if you're attempting to argue.

You drink broth from your bowl, reminding yourself that here, it's polite to slurp. This many years on and you still feel stuck in the culture and customs from home.

The thought crosses your mind again: You want to go home.

You remind yourself that _home_ has been gone for a long time.

“You know how it goes, Red,” you find yourself saying. “You lead a Rib team.”

He glances up at you, surprised. His face is flushed from the steam that rises off his barely-touched food. “I don't know what that has to do with – ”

“When you share pain with another person, it binds you together,” you tell him. It's something you learned in prison, but it's also human nature; it's inherent, it's always been known to you, if just below your consciousness.

You try not to wonder what your life might have been like, had a single soul among those you knew and loved been spared. You'd gotten good at forgetting, at least until you carried out your revenge and found yourself still standing alive, with blood on your hands and no one to make you answer for it.

“Is that so,” Red says lightly, pretending to eat. You can see, when he lifts his chopsticks, how his nails – like his walls – have gone yellow from the smoke. He hesitates. “Is that how it was between you and your...team?”

What you want to tell him is that Scratch never mattered to you. Your teammates were a means to an end, and you haven't spoken to a single one of them since Toue's death.

But somehow, you're not sure you can back up your words with enough conviction. You say to him instead, “It was something like that. We understood one another, and understanding leads to trust.”

You hesitate, and you remember being pulled from solitary confinement after months. Hearing the other men – _your_ men, your team – sigh with relief at the sight of you, because they know what it's like to be locked in there, in that filthy and airless place. They know. Every single one of them.

“Given enough time,” you tell Red, “Someone who has survived enough can come to believe that only those who have endured the same can ever know them.”

Red hesitates, with a bite of food halfway to his mouth. “Do you believe that?”

Quickly, you respond, “You ask a lot of questions.”

You expect him to argue, but he keeps his mouth shut.

You can feel the cold air seeping into the house now, through the cracks. Things may be looking up in the Old Resident District, but the promise of freedom won't patch up the walls. A thought enters your mind uninvited: Red sleeping alone, impractical thin silk blankets wrapped around him, shivering in the dark while a winter storm howls as it batters the coastline.

You finish your food and let him serve you more, but you're filling up; it's getting harder to enjoy.

He turns off the tabletop heater, removes the pan, carries it away. The warmth dissipates completely as the heater cools. He puts away the leftover food, rinses the dishes, stands there facing away from you, with his hands resting on the edge of the sink. His hair's half undone, the pin crooked and falling out, and he picks up the dishtowel to twist in his hands.

“I – I made dessert,” he begins, “But I don't know if there's a point – ”

You cut him off again. You know this isn't why he asked you here, but you don't care. You step up behind him, take the dishtowel away, set it down and hold his cold hands. You press his back to your chest.

You can feel him relax in your arms, almost immediately. His brittle, glasslike frame turns back to flesh and bone.

“You're freezing,” you tell him.

In the reflection on the window above the sink, you watch him close his eyes. He says, “Not anymore.”

You shake your head. He's a hopeless romantic and you don't know why you're doing this. He'll only break down a little more when he wakes to find you gone in the morning. He'll never admit to himself that love affairs aren't his greatest problem, even if you rub his face in it.

But you want him, and you're done with denying yourself what you want. You've given of yourself, you've sacrificed all you had, and somehow, you're still here, with nothing left to offer up.

Though he's nearly your height, he's pliant in your hands. He leans against your shoulder, soft hair tickling your neck. You breathe him in and smell smoke. You slide your palms up his arms, thinking you'll feel the smooth flesh of a man who's never known pain, but through his thin sleeves you find rough stripes of scar tissue, and knots of tense and unyielding muscle.

You push your thumbs into the back of his neck, where you think he must have strained it leaning over the cutting board for so long. He sighs, low and sweet. You can't tell for sure if it hurts him, or if he likes it. Both, you think.

You drop a hand down his long, sleek body and rest it at his hip. He shivers and swallows hard; you can hear the click in his dry throat. “This, this isn't,” he begins, then stops and tries again. “I don't do this kind of thing with men. If that's what you're thinking.”

You could laugh at him but you don't. You've had enough of using sex as a weapon, and that's all it is, when someone's unwilling. “I'll leave, if that's what you want. I'll take my hands off of you.”

He presses a hand against yours, over his hip. You feel his long fingers tighten. They're scarred even on the undersides, as if he'd once grabbed the wrong end of a sword. It would have hurt as it healed. You imagine him five or ten years ago, younger than Aoba is now and younger than your sister would be, breaking open his scabs each time he moves his hand, gritting his teeth as the blood drips from him.

“Don't go,” he whispers to you.

You know this is a mistake. You kiss his neck, nudging wisps of his hair out of the way. You'd have thought he would taste like smoke, but he's sweet, like the sugared, liquored sukiyaki sauce, and he moans the first time the tip of your tongue brushes his skin.

You know he doesn't want _you_ , he wants someone, anyone. He doesn't even want Aoba, not the way he thinks he does. He wants the void in his soul to be mended, and the best you can do is mirror it with your own.

He's warm, and he stretches his body against yours, slowly and lazily, like a cat waking from a nap. You smooth your palm across him, dipping down to his thigh and rising past his hip, to his waist. You pull aside the neck of his kimono, so you can sink your teeth in where the mark won't be seen, and he gasps. “N- _not_ in the kitchen!”

You let up on him, and you speak against his skin. “Where, then?”

He rolls his hips back against yours, only once, and you realize you're hard already, straining against your jeans. When he turns toward you, you take his chin between your fingers – his proud and narrow little chin – and you pull him in to kiss him. You think of how long it's been since you kissed anyone, of how it hasn't been long at all since you fucked anyone, and you hold him tight and part your lips and let him be the one to push his tongue into your mouth.

You suck on his tongue and rub the place where you bit him, and you try not to think about tomorrow. He's moaning into your mouth, holding onto your hair; your erection is pushed up against his hipbone and you're pointedly not considering how trauma bonds and one night stands alike tend to fall apart in the face of daily life. They're coping mechanisms, not long-term solutions. They're gifts from your mind and body, when you need them the most.

“Come upstairs,” he murmurs against your cheek, voice thick with lust and smoke.

You don't know if you've ever once fucked in a bed, unless you count your thin prison futon rolled out on the hard tile floor. You'd just as soon take Red up against the wall, but instead, you follow his lead. He pauses to light a cigarette on the way, then looks at you and puts it out.

His white sheets look crisp and cold in the shadows of his dark room. His curtains are parted just enough to let a slice of blue-tinged city light spill across the bed. He sits down and scoops up Beni, who's in sleep mode on the nightstand, and transfers him to a blanket-lined drawer. It's a tender act, and you watch it unfold: Red's thin fingers curl around the soft feathers of a mechanical bird that can't truly feel, as though he's holding onto a live pet, or a child.

Then he takes the pin from his hair and sets it aside. He glances at you. “My mother's.”

You do what you can. You take off your bracelets and place them beside the pin, with a respectful nod. “My sister's.”

He loosens his clothing, exposes his shoulders. You see the mark you left on him shining in that bright sliver of light. His tattoos cover more skin than you'd imagined. You reach out to touch them, but he shies away. Instead, you sit at his side and comb out his sleek hair with your fingers.

He leans into your touch and puts a hand on your leg. “This isn't why I invited you here.”

“You want to stop?”

He looks away. “That's not it.”

You take his chin again, like you did in the kitchen. You guide, rather than force, his eyes back to you. He's blushing, living up to your name for him, but when you speak, you use his real name again. “Koujaku. I'm not interested in anything you don't want.”

His eyes are startled, but he knows what he's doing. You feel his hand inching up your thigh, and you catch it before he can press his palm down and make your hard cock twitch. You want him, but you don't want him to pin all the wanting on you.

He breaks eye contact once more. You see his gaze light on the hairpin on his nightstand.

You sigh and brush his hair out of his face, and you pull him on top of you.

His kimono falls around his waist and then he's nude from there on up, ink and sweat and scars under your mouth and hands, your erection pressing up against his ass, your own heart pounding heavy and low in your ears. You can hear the blood rush through you. He braces his hands on your shoulders, grinding down against your lap, and you pull him all the way onto the bed, pull him closer.

“Let me ride you,” he says breathlessly, hand on the crotch of your jeans. Through his hair you can see the edge of a tattoo on his face, one you never knew he had. You think of touching it; you allow yourself to think of cupping the side of his face with your palm while he's on you, while you're in him.

But when he reaches for your zipper, you push his hands away. “No. I want you in more control than that.”

Until now, until the words came out, you hadn't realized you intended to get fucked tonight. It's been a long time, but it's the only way you'll have him. You've known since you first laid eyes on Red – on Koujaku – that you'd have to be careful not to hurt one another. You're both out of your element now: two protectors, scrambling for control, with no one to take under your damaged wings.

You let him push up your shirt and touch you there. He smooths flat palms across your chest and presses you down to his bed, which is soft and cool against your back. His hips bear down on yours now, and the head of his stiff cock rubs on your inner thigh. He mouths at your nipples, swirls the tip of his tongue around them, until they're harder and more sensitive than you thought they could get. The chilly, vulnerable pleasure of it runs through you, and you reach up to touch his hair, stroking it from roots to feathery tips.

He kisses you and you take both his hands, making him rest his full weight on you. He licks and bites along your lips, your jawline, your ear. He's good with his teeth. If you wanted him to bite hard, you could ask and he'd do it well, but that's not what you want tonight. You want – both of you want, you suspect – sharpness just grazing your most delicate skin; the tender illusion of danger.

He breathes out one more moan against your ear, then sits back. He takes something from the nightstand and presses it into your hand. It's lube, light pink in a translucent container. Cherry blossom flavor. You give him a look.

He shrugs, half-smiles, and looks at you through his eyelashes. “It's what works.”

You nod, because it will do the job, won't it? You let him unzip your jeans and take them off, and you don't complain when he doesn't undress himself any further. You spread your legs for him, ease your knees apart, resist the urge to start stroking yourself off. You uncap the lube and wet your fingers with it.

“Do you...ah.” Koujaku is looking down at you, leaning over you, concerned. He clears his throat and tries again. “Do _you_ want this?”

Part of you says you're indifferent. Your dick's hard, you want to get off, that's true enough. But this is all for him, isn't it? To give him back a sense of power?

No. You know better than that. You want him, you want Red, you want _Koujaku_. You see him falling and instinct tells you to catch him before he slips away, but there's so much more to it, and you find yourself speaking aloud as you sit up and reach beneath his clothes, as you pull his underwear down and get him slick with your lubed hand. “I asked for it,” you say. “You've got a good body, even if you're shy about it. And you're _warm_.”

“I – is that so?” he stutters, shivering against the hand you've wrapped around his cock. It's smaller than yours, if not by much. It'll feel good inside. He's wet at the tip and you want to push him down and lick it off.

That's how tonight should have gone, isn't it? A quick and hard and stupid fuck where no one asks and nothing matters, teeth and nails and table edges digging in, come stains on the throw pillows, maybe someone screaming out the wrong name. But instead, here you are exposing each other layer by layer, pausing to catch your breath in the smoky indoor air. Here you are, wondering when and why you started to care about him.

You start rubbing his cock, and with your other hand you reach lower to cup his balls and squeeze gently, caressing the tender skin of them with your thumb. He throws his head back and gasps. “Nh – Mink!”

You'd do it to him longer if you could, but this time, he's the one to push you down. You might have been able to resist, but he's caught you by surprise. You bounce against the plush mattress with him on top of you, his hands pinning your shoulders, his hair hanging in your face, and you have just enough time to catch a glimpse of his smile before he swallows your mouth again, with lingering nibbles on your lips and the sweet pressure of his tongue.

As he kisses you, he lubes his fingers again, and you guide his hand to you so he doesn't have to let up on your mouth long enough to ask permission.

He's careful. He rubs a fingertip in slow circles around your entrance, teasing you. You nudge his hand to get him all the way in, but he resists, and you let go. With your head on his pillow, you can see nothing but the silhouette of him leaning over you, streaked with silver moonlight. He presses a finger inside and you're helpless to do anything but tighten around him and moan. He withdraws, teases longer, dips his mouth down and flicks his tongue against the shockingly sensitive flesh of your hips. He sits up again, and he smiles in the dark.

You shiver. This is nothing like the sex you've had before. He eases his finger back inside, murmuring in a low voice the entire time. “That's good, go on and open up for me. Mm, is that too much for you? No? I'll put in another finger, then. I'll take it slow.”

It's not the vulnerability that bothers you. It's not that the power dynamic is flipped his way; that's what you asked for. You knew what you were getting into, and it's nothing you haven't done before.

“Are you doing all right? Does it feel good for you?”

He has two fingers halfway inside you now, and you're starting to feel filled up. He kisses the place where your hip meets your thigh and you rock up against his mouth, then sink down onto his fingers again. You'd nod in response to his question, but the very idea of it makes you turn your face away and nearly blush.

You've fucked men who want to break you, men who want to be broken, men who are trying to claim some of your power or offer their own up to you. You've slept with men who want you to make them feel worthy and men who act as though you gain worth only under their bodies and hands. Koujaku is none of those things. There's power here in this night, in this act, but you can't figure out anymore who's giving or who's taking.

He moves his fingers in and out of you, lending you his warmth, withdrawing it. It's good, but you want all of him, any way you can have him. You reach out for him; your fingers brush bare inked skin. You breathe out his name. “Koujaku. Come on.”

He withdraws his fingers, painstakingly slowly. You clench involuntarily around him; your body doesn't want him to go. In a light, teasing tone, he asks, “Do you want more of me, Mink?”

The moment he leans in close enough, you grab his shoulders and pull him on top of you. No more holding back. You hold his hips and get the head of his cock inside you. He arches his back and moans; you pull him down again, past your raised and parted thighs, and push the hair out of his face. He lets your fingers smooth over the hidden tattoo on his face as you let him as deep into your body as he can get. You bring his lips to yours and suck his tongue into your mouth.

You keep guiding his hips, setting his pace. He's receptive to instruction; he quickly gets the sense that you like it close, fast, and hungry, and if his attempts to speak are any indication, he likes it too. “Ah, h-hah, Mink, you're so tight, you're...”

He trails off, and you bite his lower lip. He bites back, and you can see his eyes widen in shock, as if he didn't know he were capable of such a thing. He opens his mouth to say something, but you squeeze his ass and pull him still deeper into you, and he gasps and keeps going.

You run your hands over his body, around the clothes he's still got on. Firm round ass, narrow waist, broad shoulders, most of it marked with old, healed scars, small bumps that break the long fluid lines of him. He's so warm to the touch that beads of sweat form on his forehead; you lick them off.

You don't want to let go of him, but you fit your hand between your bodies to take hold of your own cock. His muscles flex against the backs of your fingers. You hear yourself murmuring, “Don't stop.”

He smells of smoke and sugar and his mouth tastes the same, and his hair spills over his shoulders and falls softly around you. His moans are constant, breathy, full of stripped-down lust. His eyelashes tickle your face. You savor the thought of where he's got you, what he's doing with you, as you rub your cock with quick, urgent motions. He's got you stretched open, held down and filled up.

You come before he does, bucking up your hips beneath him as your body floods with the heat of release. The orgasm doesn't last long; you've trained yourself to see it as a means to an end, but when Koujaku brings your hand to his mouth to lick your come from your palm and suck it off your fingers, a new shock of pleasure runs through you.

After the last drop, he licks his lips and meets your eyes, all without letting up on you for an instant. You don't think, you just act. You pull him flat to you again and wrench him to the side, until he's on his back with his cock still in you, and this time, you pry open his mouth with your tongue and taste yourself as you pin both his wrists flat against the bed. He can't thrust in this position, but you feel him squirm beneath you, and you tighten around him.

You watch his face as you do this. You keep an eye on him. You're firm, but not rough; he's the last one you'd want to hurt. His moans have become urgent small whimpers, and you're worried until he reaches out for you and begs, “M-Mink, let me come!”

You rise to your knees and ride him, taking your weight off him, using just the strength of your legs. His eyes are shut, so he doesn't see you lube your fingers. You push his clothes up, guide his legs apart, ease his hips higher, and when you reach behind you to touch him, you mirror what he did for you earlier. You touch gently; you force nothing inside. You ask him, “Is this okay?”

He nods. He's biting his lip, wrinkling the sheets in his fisted hands. The moonlight leaves a narrow silvery streak in his hair. You want to throw open the curtains and see him exposed, but the gentle heat of his body in darkness is just as good.

You borrow his technique again. You walk him through it. “I'm going to put two fingers in. Three, if you can take it. I'll keep you inside of me, too. I want you to come, but I want to feel it in as many ways as I can.”

He nods and twists beneath you, gasping. His breath catches once you've got two fingers in. He's so tight that the pressure almost hurts you, but he relaxes enough to loosen up once you start moving, fucking him with your fingers and fucking yourself on him at the same pace. You add a third finger, and the intense pressure returns.

He cries out wordlessly, desperately. He reaches toward you, grazes your thigh, and on impulse you take his hand. You press it against your leg, letting him feel you use his body in one more way.

His hips tense up, he goes painfully tight around you, and you know he's almost done. He clutches your hand, and you feel him come inside you: pulse after pulse of pure heat.

You stay on him, in him, until he's soft and spent and breathlessly quiet. Then you pull the blanket over him and lie beside him, still holding onto his hand, until he sits up and invites you into the shower with him. He squeezes your hand, just once, just lightly, before he lets you go.

You don't fuck in the shower. You barely even touch, you just clean up, side-by-side. Koujaku hums a tune under his breath, but otherwise, he seems comfortable with the silence. If you glance at him, he reddens and looks away, but he doesn't try to hide himself, and he kisses the corner of your mouth once before he steps out to dry off.

He brushes his hair before getting back in bed. You consider offering to help, but instead you watch from a distance, turning his mother's hairpin over and over in your hands

You both sleep naked, face to face, with his arm draped over your waist and your hand on the small of his back. Though he's not that much shorter than you, you've ended up with his head tucked under your chin. You're fine with that.

He falls asleep quickly. He snores now and then, but stops as soon as you nudge him. You stare out the gap in the curtains and see a full moon over a quiet, deserted street, with the cold white light of an all-night convenience store on the corner in the distance. You think about Koujaku alone at night, gazing at this empty road, and you don't like the feeling it gives you.

You think, as you feel the pleasant soreness Koujaku has left in you, that this changes nothing. You touch the scar on the bridge of his nose, and you understand that you can't save him. Even if you each let your guard down and shared your secrets, you imagine you'd both talk yourselves to death before you could come close to knowing the other fully.

You think again of how long you've spent wishing that you could go home. You wonder if _home_ is where Koujaku got his scars. You know that home isn't just where you were born, or where you've lived the longest. Now you know, too, that home can turn on you. This is Koujaku's house, but it's not his home anymore, not right now. You've loosened him up, but his hands still shake in his sleep.

Maybe home isn't the point for people like you. There's an English saying you remember, _home is where the heart is,_ and you've spent your life trying to ensure that your heart isn't able to lead you. Maybe, before you consider building a home, you need to build a heart – a patchwork heart laced together with fraying tethers that bind you to your few fragile reasons for staying here, for staying alive.

Maybe you just need something to hold onto.

Even once your mind quiets, you lie awake for a long time, looking out the window and watching the moon cross the sky. You know your shoulder will ache in the morning if you fall asleep this way, but it's a small price to pay. It can't hurt to ensure that no matter what, Koujaku will wake up in your arms.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Adapter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5141657) by [known](https://archiveofourown.org/users/known/pseuds/known)




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